told her fairly, he could not trust her thoroughly till she had given some earnest of her promised good conduct. Ernestine, nothing loathe, sacrificed her present enjoyment to her ultimate advantage, and decided upon vegetating at St. Tadds, the most retired spot in the three kingdoms.

Here she had run into the very jaws of danger. The loneliness of her life that first week at the Grange had created in her a longing for society; and Geoffrey Singleton had come to fill the blank. In two short days, finding her in such a mood, he had done more towards winning her heart than those other men-some of the best and showiest about town-had done in months. More, he had gone near recalling her to a sense of what was due to herself. Lord Caversham's chances would have been poor, indeed, if Geoffrey could have pleaded in person while Ernestine was wavering that night. For this woman was yet so curiously capricious that if a whim

She was so im

or fancy seized her she would hazard everything to gratify her wishes. pressionable-so apt to be swayed by surrounding influences that she never attempted to hold out against them. Her only safety in such a case was to turn her back upon the danger she dared not face. Geoffrey Singleton had won her heart; were she to remain here at St. Tadds she must assuredly have yielded. There was no alternative but flight. What was it she dreaded? To follow the dictates of her heart, for by such a weakness she would surrender all that she had worked so hard to win.

"Not another day must I remain here," she said to herself, as she tried to shake off the grief that was weighing her down. "It is folly, rank folly, to dream of Geoffrey. 1 must show a clean pair of heels. Lord Caversham is my lot; why should I try to escape him ?"

Great rings were round her eyes next

morning, and her hand was hot and feverish; but she passed quickly and resolutely down the grand staircase, and left The Grange by a side door.

Dressed in a plain, dark travelling suit of blue serge, and with her veil drawn over her face, it would have been difficult to recognise her.

At the station, to which she went on foot, the maid met her.

"Here's the ticket, ma'am, and the box is in the van."

"Give this letter, Hoffman, to Mr. Singleton as soon as he is up."

Then she took her seat, and was whirled off to London. Long before Geoffrey received her letter she had reached her house in town, thence she wrote at once to Lord Caversham, at his club, and implored him to come and see her.

"Why," she said, "do you wrong me with such suspicions? I have come straight to

London, for I could not rest till I had seen ? Will you

you.

I expect you may

When come to lunch ?"

Ernestine Armitage counted very certainly on her powers of persuasion, could she but get the man within the reach of her seductive voice. From her first acquaintance with Lord Caversham she exercised a strange ascendency over him. So confident was she in the magic of her influence, exerted by a few soft words, that it never once entered her brain that he might yet slip through her fingers. His recent conduct might easily be explained. In a moment of disappointment-of vexation that his journey to St. Tadds had been paid by no caresses-under such circumstances he had written the chiding note she had received at St. Tadds. But now that she had condescended to come up to town in person to explain, all would of course be made right.

So she eat her breakfast calmly, and then went up to her own room to make a careful

toilette for the coming interview. As she scanned her face closely in the glass, it seemed to her a trifle wan and careworn. The ball and its attendant excitement, the long wrestle with her better self, and the hurried journey to London-all these had left their traces.

"I am looking my very worst, tant mieux. I will make capital of it, and ask him if he cannot see the effect his letter has produced. My pale face will prove to him what I have suffered. And then I must say something. The anguish of mind was insupportable, of course. From the moment I received his letter I was on thorns. I rushed to the station to take the first train to town. Dreadful discovery-I must wait to make my peace till this morning, for the last train had gone. Stay, had it, I wonder?"

And she turned for confirmation to Bradshaw.

"None till after midnight by which I could Heavens! I must wait!

possibly travel.